Product Description

In one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, Edward P. Jones, two-time National Book Award finalist, tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order and chaos ensues. In a daring and ambitious novel, Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all of its moral complexities.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55984 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-01
• Released on: 2004-05-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Amazon.com
Set in Manchester County, Virginia, 20 years before the Civil War began, Edward P. Jones's debut novel, The Known World, is a masterpiece of overlapping plot lines, time shifts, and heartbreaking details of life under slavery. Caldonia Townsend is an educated black slaveowner, the widow of a well-loved young farmer named Henry, whose parents had bought their own freedom, and then freed their son, only to watch him buy himself a slave as soon as he had saved enough money. Although a fair and gentle master by the standards of the day, Henry Townsend had learned from former master about the proper distance to keep from one's property. After his death, his slaves wonder if Caldonia will free them. When she fails to do so, but instead breaches the code that keeps them separate from her, a little piece of Manchester County begins to unravel. Impossible to rush through, The Known World is a complex, beautifully written novel with a large cast of characters, rewarding the patient reader with unexpected connections, some reaching into the present day. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly
In a crabbed, powerful follow-up to his National Book Award-nominated short story collection (Lost in the City), Jones explores an oft-neglected chapter of American history, the world of blacks who owned blacks in the antebellum South. His fictional examination of this unusual phenomenon starts with the dying 31-year-old Henry Townsend, a former slave-now master of 33 slaves of his own and more than 50 acres of land in Manchester County, Va.-worried about the fate of his holdings upon his early death. As a slave in his youth, Henry makes himself indispensable to his master, William Robbins. Even after Henry's parents purchase the family's freedom, Henry retains his allegiance to Robbins, who patronizes him when he sets up shop as a shoemaker and helps him buy his first slaves and his plantation. Jones's thorough knowledge of the legal and social intricacies of slaveholding allows him to paint a complex, often startling picture of life in the region. His richest characterizations-of Robbins and Henry-are particularly revealing. Though he is a cruel master to his slaves, Robbins is desperately in love with a black woman and feels as much fondness for Henry as for his own children; Henry, meanwhile, reads Milton, but beats his slaves as readily as Robbins does. Henry's wife, Caldonia, is not as disciplined as her husband, and when he dies, his worst fears are realized: the plantation falls into chaos. Jones's prose can be rather static and his phrasings ponderous, but his narrative achieves crushing momentum through sheer accumulation of detail, unusual historical insight and generous character writing.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
On a small plantation in Manchester County, Virginia, in the eighteen-fifties, a freed black man named Henry Townsend lives with his wife and the thirty-three slaves he has bought, some with the help of his former owner. This kaleidoscopic first novel depicts daily life for Henry and his friends ("members of a free Negro class that, while not having the power of some whites, had been brought up to believe that they were rulers waiting in the wings"); for the plantation's slaves, one of whom believes that he, too, will be transformed into an owner after Henry's death; and for the county's white inhabitants, who coexist uneasily with their slaves and their emancipated black neighbors. Jones has written a book of tremendous moral intricacy: no relationship here is left unaltered by the bonds of ownership, and liberty eludes most of Manchester County's residents, not just its slaves.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Riveting! You'll never forget it.
Edward P. Jones's "The Known World": A Study Guide from Gale's "Novels for Students" (Volume 26, Chapter 4)

Difficult to read but well worth it
I, too, found this book difficult to read, but not because of the prose; it was difficult to read because the subject matter was so viscerally presented and articulately explored. To confront the idea of people being worth money and nothing more was almost too much to bear. I applaud Mr. Jones for his ability to dig into this subject and to display it in a way that forces us to face such a legacy.

I was afraid that there would not be any redemptive value in the book but found that redemption was offered in the smallest, most subtle ways. Stop reading now if you don't want a spoiler. The knowledge after the fact that Moses had not killed his wife and child, that the man who would lead to his maiming knew it, saw it on him was powerfully felt because of its subtlety. The way Jones presents the final assault on Moses, the cutting of his Achilles tendon was remarkable. Knowing that the man who casually enacted such violence would never do so again after being forced to bear the suffering he had created, almost through the barrel of his body, for miles and while literally being hugged by that suffering was simply sublime. Clearly, this book is well worth the pain it may cause and the sadness in may imprint.

Save your money
This was an all right book. Get it at your library rather than buying it.